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Real estate blog tips and tools. Consulting services availableSun, 04 Sep 2011 00:48:30 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.1RealEstateBlogProhttps://feedburner.google.comHow to determine what theme a WordPress blog is usinghttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RealEstateBlogPro/~3/GSkVgvsgCOE/
http://realestateblogpro.com/how-to-determine-what-theme-a-wordpress-blog-is-using/#commentsSun, 04 Sep 2011 00:25:49 +0000http://realestateblogpro.com/?p=264Continue reading →]]>I hang out in various and sundry Facebook groups, forums, etc. where blogging is often a topic of discussion. Without fail, there are many folks in said groups that will ask, “What theme is such-and-such site using?”

Here are a couple of tips for determining what WordPress theme a site is using. They aren’t foolproof, but they will help you determine the theme in roughly 94.26% of cases (yeah, I made that stat up. I don’t know the exact number. It’s the vast majority though…)

Look in the Footer

Many times the theme will be linked to or mentioned right there in the footer of the site in question. On this very site for example, you will see this:

Some bloggers will remove the reference to the theme in their footer. (Why, I don’t know. It doesn’t take up much real estate and it’s a nice thing to do to recognize the theme developer. But to each their own.)

If there isn’t a footer reference, look in the source code.

Every modern browser has a way to view a web pages source code. Typically it’s done by right clicking anywhere on the page and selecting an option like “View page source”. Here’s how a right click on this site looks in the Chrome browser:

Here’s what it looks like in Firefox:

I don’t care what it looks like in Internet Explorer, because IE is the suck and you really should be using a better browser. For the sake of completeness though, on IE you right click and then select, “View Source”.

Once you open a page’s source code, do a search for “wp-content/themes” (without the quotes). To search source code, just type ctrl-f and a search box will pop up. Type wp-content/themes into the search box. Chrome and Firefox will highlight any matches. I assume IE does too. Of note, ctrl-f is a PC function. Macs have some similar thing, but I don’t know what it is. I’m (sadly, most of the time) a PC guy.

On this blog, this is what you’ll see:

See where it says “2010-weaver”? There’s your clue as to what theme is being used. You may need to do a little research using the greatest site on the internet to get the exact theme:

There you go!

Some sites use a WordPress Framework and a child theme. This can make looking at the source code a little trickier. Here is the source code for that amazing real estate blog, Phoenix Real Estate Guy:

So is TPREG running on PlatformPro, or PlatformBase?

Both really. PlatformPro is the framework and PlatformBase is the theme. A child theme won’t work without the framework, so just Google either term (it often helps to Google the term along with the words “wordpress theme”) and you’ll find the page for the theme.

Who Cares?

Maybe no one cares. But I sure see “what theme are they using?” being asked frequently. Now you know how to find the answer, most of the time. If neither of these options work, you can always contact the blogger and ask them. I don’t know very many bloggers that won’t share what theme they are running. Just stroke their ego and gush, “I just LOVE the look of your amazing blog! Can you tell me what theme you are using?” Of course the site you are looking at in admiration, awe and envy may well have an extensively modified / customized theme that may look nothing like the theme that comes straight out of the box. But hey, it’s a start…

The problem with WordPress hosting (or hosting in general) may be there are just too many options to chose from. Sometimes I wish there were just two to three web hosting companies, not 500 million. OK, there probably aren’t 500 million web hosts out there. But there are MANY and as with any service, there are great hosts and lousy hosts.

First let’s look at types of hosting.

Free Hosting: While free is always appealing, please avoid free hosting. It’s almost always supported by ads – ads that you have little to no control over. You can get good shared hosting for less than $7 per month. You don’t need free hosting.

Shared Hosting: This is just what it sounds like. You share server space with other users. I don’t know the stats, but it’s a safe assumption that the vast majority of real estate blogs are on shared hosting. It’s cheap (free to $20/month) and the hosting company takes care of the heavy lifting on the server side. Things like setup, required scripting languages, applications, control panels, etc.

Dedicated Hosting: This is where you have a single server dedicated to you. Since the costs are incurred by you alone, dedicated hosting is significantly more expensive than shared hosting. It can run several hundred dollars a month (or more). Dedicated hosting provides the most control, but also requires you to install everything yourself and you are responsible for security and maintenance. “Managed Dedicated Hosting” is available where the host will take care of setup, security, installations and maintenance. Expect to pay high dollars for this level of service.

Virtual Private (or Dedicated) Server (VPS/VDS): This is sort of a combination of shared and dedicated hosting (and as such the pricing falls between the two). In a nutshell you get a segment of a server for your site (hosting techno-geeks don’t go throwing down on me for over-simplifying things here.)

Cloud Based Hosting: This is “decentralized” hosting. Sites are split across multiple servers in multiple locations. Since your site isn’t sitting on one hard drive somewhere, cloud hosting tends to provide better uptime. When one piece of hardware goes do the site can be shifted to other hardware. This can also help with traffic spikes as the traffic load is “balanced” across multiple platforms. Ditto for page loading speed. It is also possible to use cloud hosting on an “as needed” basis – where you pay for only the bandwidth you use. Prices for cloud based hosting vary depending on the services you have.

Managed Hosting: Somewhat new on the scene, managed hosting can be shared, dedicated, virtual or cloud based. With managed hosting, a provider manages everything for you – all the way down to installing and updating WordPress and plugins. Users are typically granted limited access to the server itself – enough to run their applications, but not enough to break the server. The blog you’re reading right now is running on managed hosting. Costs vary wildly, but dedicated WordPress managed hosting is quite affordable – and removes a lot of the headaches involved with maintaining a WordPress site.

There are other types of hosting such as Grid / Node, clustered and co-location. It gets technical fast. For the purposes of hosting a WordPress real estate blog, the types mentioned above cover the vast majority of what’s needed.

Where to Host?

As previously mentioned, there are hundreds of hosting companies are out there. Add in hosting resellers, and that number swiftly climbs into the tens of thousands. So how do you pick a web host?

Do your research. You can read reviews of hosting providers all across the web. One caveat – you WILL run across negative reviews of ANY host. Trust me, someone out there hates their host and isn’t afraid to say so. But if you find a host where the positive reviews far outweigh the negative, you may have yourself a winner.

Hosting companies that I’ve heard good things about from people I trust include DreamHost, BlueHost, and Hostgator. This blog is running on Page.ly managed hosting , and I LOVE it. I’m not afraid to upgrade WordPress and plugins, but that doesn’t stop me from liking the fact that Page.ly does it all for me. If you’re looking to install WordPress and keep it updated with the least amount of hassle, Page.ly is a fantastic solution. If you are looking for managed hosting that includes building a semi-custom WordPress site, look into Virtual Results. They’ll build and host a site and include a home search, Altos Research statistics and more. Finally, if you are looking for a fully custom real estate blog based on WordPress, take a peak at HaMedia. They do very good work.

My primary blog, Phoenix Real Estate Guy, is hosted with Rackspace Cloud hosting. This is probably more hosting horsepower than most people need, but uptime is stellar and support is second to none.

I have used GoDaddy hosting in the past and can not recommend it. I was plagued with downtime as my traffic levels increased, and support, while there 24/7 almost always blamed WordPress on issues I had – it was NEVER their fault. Funny though, as soon as I switched off of GoDaddy those “WordPress issues” disappeared. To be completely fair to GoDaddy though, that was several years ago and their hosting products have changed significantly since then. But the buzz on the interwebs isn’t all that great for GoDaddy hosting. I’ve also hosted at MediaTemple and liked them until they ran into issues with uptime. I still host some minor sites there and uptime seems much better.

You can switch hosts if you find the one you select isn’t up to par, but trust me, switching hosts is a royal pain in the ass, especially if your site has a lot of content. It’s doable though, and necessary sometimes. I’m sure there are people out there that will switch a site over to a new host for a fee, and that would be worth exploring. Some hosts claim they will do this, though I have no direct experience with that.

One of the best ways to get info about a potential host is to ask your friends, or ask people whose sites you like that seem to preform well (with regard to page load speeds) who they host with.

Research, pick one and go with it. Just keep this in mind – the greatest host in the known universe won’t be of any help if you don’t generate the content, provide the goods, and get those goods noticed through appropriate calls to action.

Short of whether or not to “force” home search registration, nothing seems to polarize real estate bloggers more than the “to blog or not to blog listings” question.

Here’s the deal…

I can’t tell you if it’s right or wrong to blog about listings. For you see, there are no absolutes when it comes to real estate blogging. (Well, you absolutely need the ability to search for homes on your blog. But that’s about the only hard and fast “rule” in real estate blogging. And of course, even that is just my opinion. But if you want to generate prospects via your blog, you need a home search solution.)

Personally I don’t blog individual listings

I don’t think I’ve ever written a blog post about an individual listing. If I have it was long ago in a far away place.

Why not? Doesn’t it make sense to get your listings out in front of people?

Well sure it does. I want every one of our listings to be readily available on the internet. Ideally each and every listing should be able to be found in Google by anyone searching for the property address, the MLS number, the subdivision name, even by long-tail search terms like “3 bedroom home in Phoenix under $200K”. A blog post is one way to do that (assuming your blog has enough authority in Google’s eyes to rank your blog post for such terms).

But I find blogs on real estate listings boring to read. My eyes glaze over, my head fogs up, and I click something – anything – swiftly if I run across a blog post about a listing. Let’s face it, there are only so many ways you can describe a property for sale. I assume if I find posts on listings boring, then other readers will too. And the last thing you want to do is bore your readers.

A different approach might be to write a blog post about the neighborhood your listing is in. This makes for a much more interesting read, and importantly is a far more “evergreen” post than something dedicated to a single listing. You can write about the neighborhood and include such things as nearby local businesses, information on the schools, local area activities etcetera that won’t “die” when the listing gets sold. Feel free to include a link to a single property page for your listing (or use something like the dsIDXPress plugin or the FlexMLS IDX plugin (if available in your area) to populate current listings into your post – which will include your listing. The power of these plugins come from the fact these plugins keep the listing inventory current, automatically. So someone visiting that post weeks, months or years from the publication date will still see current inventory).

It is lot easier to tell the story of a neighborhood than it is to tell the story of a single home.

With the plethora of third-party listing sites out there, if you syndicate your listings then they will be “Googleable” by address and MLS number. Adding one more blog post to the mix likely won’t matter nor increase the listings visibility.

But it appeases my sellers!

This is the argument I hear most often for blogging listings – “it makes my sellers happy”.

No, what makes your sellers happy is selling their home. It is your job as their agent to maximize the exposure of their home, and to get it sold as quickly as possible, for the most money possible, with the least amount of hassle for the seller. A big part of your job is to educate your sellers on what does and does not work with regard to marketing their property. If a big full-color ad in the Sunday paper makes them happy, are you going to do it? Are you going to hassle them and interrupt their lives and waste your time on the weekend holding open houses? Just to “make them happy”?

Teach your sellers what you’ll do to market their property. Show them data to support your marketing strategy. Rather then spend time, effort and money making them happy, spend that time, effort and money on things that will sell their home. Trust me, no seller on the planet has ever said, “We had a great agent, they sold our home fast and at a good price, but they never blogged about our listing”.

Get the home sold, and they won’t really care what you did and did not do. They’ll simply tell their friends and family you sold their home.

I’d rather my sellers say that than, “You should have seen the blog post our agent wrote…”

PS: If anyone wants to buy the home pictured here, call me….

]]>http://realestateblogpro.com/on-blogging-real-estate-listings/feed/100http://realestateblogpro.com/on-blogging-real-estate-listings/What WordPress Theme Should I Use?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RealEstateBlogPro/~3/zVUzwKLIzD8/
http://realestateblogpro.com/what-wordpress-theme-should-i-use/#commentsMon, 13 Jun 2011 06:14:10 +0000http://realestateblogpro.com/?p=228Continue reading →]]>There’s a great Facebook group out there that I belong to, Tech Support for Real Estate Agents (if you want an invite, just leave a comment. I *think* we have to be Facebook friends for me to invite you. If we’re not, hit me up on FB with a friend request). In said group, the topic of WordPress themes comes up. Often.

Here’s the short answer to the question, “What WordPress theme should I use?”. . .

It depends.

Isn’t that helpful?

It does depend. It depends on what your goal is for your real estate blog, it depends on your experience level with WordPress, it depends on how much money you have to spend, it depends on your personal taste – it depends on many things.

So I can’t tell you what is the “best” theme you should use. Best means different things to different people and everyone is in a different situation. Me telling you which theme to use is akin to me telling you what kind of car to drive…

Here is what I can tell you about WordPress themes for real estate blogs

All themes are not created equal. A theme does more than just determine the look and feel of your blog. There is a boatload of code that makes up a WordPress theme, and as with any pile of code, how it is written can impact not just how your blog looks, but how it performs – rendering in a browser and in search engines. I’ve experimented with themes that look fabulous in Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Then I view the site in Internet Explorer and all hell has broken loose. Things shift around, columns grow and shrink, all sorts of weirdness going on. While I wish nothing more than for Internet Explorer to be banished from the face of the planet, the simple fact is, a LOT of people use IE. I have people visit my blogs every day using IE6 – which is now THREE major revisions behind the latest offering from Redmond.

Wonky browser rendering is maddening enough, but how about using a theme that search engine spiders choke on? That’s a bad idea.

Another bad thing, potentially very bad is that there are themes out there where the designer is, to put it bluntly, a douchebag and they insert malicious code into the theme. Malicious code can do anything from inject hidden links in your theme to wreck havoc on your computer.

Generally speaking, you get what you pay for. Believe me, I understand the love for free themes. Free is cheap. And there are some stellar free themes out there. But let’s face it, in most of life the adage “you get what you pay for” rings true. That’s not to say that every premium theme (i.e. theme you pay for) is necessarily a great theme. But designers that charge for a theme do so because they make a living coding WordPress things. You are far more likely to get tightly and appropriately coded themes, free of malicious code, from a premium theme. You will probably also get support of some sort (often in the form of a user forum) and the themes will be updated on a regular basis. Updates are important not just for added functionality, but for keeping up with WordPress updates as well. WordPress seems to update their software at roughly the same frequency that I change underwear, so it’s important to have a theme developer that stays on top of WP updates. I’ve seen theme break completely with a new (usually major) revision of WordPress.

Again, I’m not dissing free themes. This very blog you are reading is running on the Weaver free theme. It offers all the goodness mentioned above – clean code, support, frequent upgrades. It’s just important to be careful with theme selection and remember that generally you get what you pay for.

Ease of use matters to many. I often get asked, “can I (or someone) make my theme do X, Y, or Z?” The answer is yes. Any theme can be modified to do anything that’s possible with CSS and PHP code. And if you have PHP skills, that means in theory just about anything can be done with any theme. Of course most of us don’t have the requisite skill set to modify our themes extensively. Most people reading this blog, primarily real estate agents, will be lucky if we can figure out how to change a header graphic or some color in the theme.

Fortunately, theme designers are starting to understand that most users don’t have their coding skills and they are beginning to add control panels that make changing many theme properties as simple as pointing and clicking, dragging and dropping. Many themes make it super easy to add a header graphic, support native WordPress menus (including drop downs) and more.

“WYSIWYG” (What You See is What You Get) themes are also coming out. Some make it pretty darn easy to drag “modules” (or “leaves” or “boxes” – whatever the theme calls them) around and create some very “non-bloglike” layouts.

But beware, there are still countless themes out there that offer none of this. I recently helped someone change their header graphic and it required editing core theme PHP files AND the two CSS files to simply change the default header graphic.

Theme choice ultimately is personal. In the end, the theme you chose defines the look (or capability to make the look) that you want for your blog. As such, choosing a theme gets pretty personal pretty quickly. There are literally thousands of options for theme selection. Play around with a few, look for sites running themes you like and see what the owner has done with them. Explore the user forums (some premium themes will lock down certain parts of the user forums for paying customers).

And keep this in mind:

The greatest theme on Earth means nothing if you don’t have consistent, quality content.

That is important folks. I know agents that have dropped thousands of dollars on visually stunning custom themes only to find out within a few months that they hate creating content.

And if you hate creating content, you won’t do it.

And if you don’t do it, you can not have a successful blog no matter what theme you are using.

Here are some themes I like and use. Of course, as mentioned throughout the post above, what I like and what works for you may be completely different.

You heard you need a blog. You heard it’s the magical marketing wave of the future. You won’t be successful unless you write on the internet. Everyone says it; it must be true. So you went and got one. Now you’ve got a blog.

You’ve written 5 posts in three months. You looked at your Google Analytics and if you’re reading it right you average 3 viewers per day; although one time you had 16 viewers in one day. But it’s possible you’re reading it wrong; you’re not really sure.

You don’t get it. Everyone has been telling you, ‘if you build it, they will come.’ So where are the dang baseball players? You mowed down this whole cornfield and built this stadium and where the heck is everyone???

Well here’s the hard truth: In blogging not only do you have to build it, but you have to build it again and again regularly. If you’re not posting 3-5 times a week, the general public has no hope of finding you. And here’s an even harder truth: Even that is not enough.

The thing is, five years ago you could build a real estate blog and regularly post decent content and at the end of the day walk away with a reasonable audience. Now… well now the word is out. Now everyone and his Cousin Janet knows a blog has the potential to generate business. So everyone and his Cousin Janet has a blog. This means there is too much competition for blogging to really be easy.

The game has advanced and if you want to be successful, you need to advance with it. Luckily, we already know the rules. We’ve learned and been mentored on the rules from the very beginning of our careers as real estate agents. The playing field is slightly more technologically advanced, but we’re savvy and can figure out how to play.

Let’s think back to Farming 101. How did that work? We had content (a mailer) that we wanted to disburse to the public. We had some kind of information we decided was useful or would make us stand out in some way. We didn’t just drop it on the corner and hope the wind would blow it to potential buyers and sellers, did we? No, we targeted a neighborhood or group we wanted to receive our information.

And what else was the big key to farming? Oh, that’s right: it has to be done often. People need several ‘touches’ to even realize you’re there, right? They won’t even look at your first mailer, but maybe by the 5th, they’ll know who you are. And if you keep doing it, then when they have a housing need, they’ll think of you.

Ah yes, well the internet and blogging works the same way, believe it or not. You start by creating your blog ‘content’, but that’s just the first step. From there:

1. Choosing your neighborhood – Who in the blogosphere are you looking to target? Is it local people? Mommy bloggers? Foodies? What types of other bloggers might be interested in your content AND be able to use your services? Figure this out so you’ll know who to look for.

2. Sending out your mailer – Seek out and read the blogs of these people. Comment on their blogs. Let them know you’re reading their content and entice them to come see yours.

3. Systemize your regular mailing cycle – One comment isn’t going to do it any more than one mailer does. Keep track of who you’re commenting on and how often. Give yourself a minimum number of comments per blog before you take one off your list. If after the first comment they may visit your blog once; after the third, they might feel like you are reading them regularly and reciprocate. Don’t let this be a random chance encounter, make it your job, just like you do your farm mailers.

In the blogging world, we call this ‘Creating Community’. If you do it enough, it will snowball on its own, just like with farming. A homeowner you’ve been mailing to for years tells her sister how good you are and then you get a call. That’s how it all works, right?

See, it’s not so different from what we already know. It’s not easy, but hey, if it was, everyone would be doing it, right?

]]>http://realestateblogpro.com/how-to-use-farming-101-to-get-blog-traffic/feed/27http://realestateblogpro.com/how-to-use-farming-101-to-get-blog-traffic/Three things not to do on your real estate blog / web sitehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RealEstateBlogPro/~3/E3ZyNEh_A8M/
http://realestateblogpro.com/three-things-not-to-do-on-your-real-estate-blog-web-site/#commentsMon, 27 Dec 2010 00:46:13 +0000http://realestateblogpro.com/three-things-not-to-do-on-your-real-estate-blog-web-site/Continue reading →]]>I stumbled across a local real estate broker’s web site today. It took about 30 seconds to notice three fundamental issues with the site.

And before anyone gets twisted out of shape and thinks I’m just dissing someone’s site, keep this in mind…

One can learn by watching the good things other people do. But you can also learn by observing what not to do.

This particular site is not alone, there are countless examples just like it scattered all across the Internet. LOTS of real estate practitioners have web sites. There are many brilliant sites out there, and many that are not-so-swift. Be brilliant.

What were the three glaring errors I saw?

Three Common Real Estate Website / Blog Mistakes

1) Poor spelling / typos:

Watch me write, and you will swiftly see that I can’t spell nor type worth a flip. Fortunately we have the spell checker. No, you should not be a slave to your spell checker. After all, this passes a spell check with flying colors:

Eye wood like two bee leave that spell Czech pro grams are perfect. Butt the fact is their knot. Ewe kneed to bee care full.

Yeah, that’s an extreme example, but you get the idea. Don’t just rely on spell checkers, but use them in conjunction with common sense and proofreading.

The glaring error on the site in question? They had “Search the MSL” in their menu. That should, of course, read “Search the MLS”.

2) Not updating your site:

I am a bit of a news junkie. So when I arrive at a site I tend to click on things that say, “NEWS”. Doing that on this broker’s site takes you to a page with one “news” story. It’s a story about how younger generations are buying more houses. The first sentence ends with mentioning a “Homeownership in America Study” that was published by a large national real estate brokerage – in 2006.

2006? Uhm, we are less than a week away from 2011…

Four to five year old content and sources do not qualify as “news”.

Another example in the same site was a contest. Contests are a great idea to attract attention and traffic. But this is not the correct way to do that:

. . . results will be posted by August 5, 2009. Entries must be received by May 30, 2011 . . .

So results will be posted some 19 months before entries must be received???

If you can’t commit to keeping up a news section on your site, if you can’t put correct dates in a contest announcement, then don’t do it. Far (FAR) better to have nothing than to have five year old sources or utterly incomprehensible dates / instructions in your copy. This, along with typos, screams “I PAY NO ATTENTION TO DETAIL!” Is that really the message you want to send to current and potential clients?

Pay attention. People notice stuff like this.

3) Goeasy on thefonts, colors and varioustextenhancements:

Every single word of text on this web site was bolded. Every. Single. One. There was also black text, red text and gold (?) text – on the same page. In fact, there was black and red text, underlined in gold – in the same sentence. There were font changes within the same paragraphs.

Granted I am no expert in typography, but I know an almost impossible page to read when I see one.

I have also seen people that center everything.

Which is incredibly annoying.

And difficult to read.

Isn’t it?

Please, left justify your text.

When it comes to typography, the simpler the better. Pick one color and one font (and not some fancy font!) Be consistent. The occasional bold or italics is fine, it’s a great way to emphasize something. Underlining on web copy is generally a bad idea – people will think it’s a link. For the love of all things holy, please don’t bold every word on your site. Why in the world do you want to make your site difficult to read?

You don’t have to be an expert in design (clearly I am not). Less is more. White space is your friend. Use common sense. It is very easy to get blinded by what is happening on pages you build for your site. Find a neutral third party and ask them, “How does this look?” Can’t find a neutral third party? Try this…

Take your laptop to Starbucks. Pull up your site. When someone walks in say, “Hey, I just did a little re-design on my web site. If you’ll take 10 seconds to look at it and give me your honest opinion, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.” People (well, most people) like to be nice, so it won’t be hard to find someone to help. Due to their niceness, they may say, “looks great!” Dig a little, ask them specifics like, “how are the colors”, “do you think it’s easy to read”, “what is your first reaction/impression”, “what do you notice first”? Heck, say, “we’ll never see each other again, so if it sucks, just say so.” You don’t want them spending a lot of time on this. They don’t want to spend a lot of time. You are looking for a quick, first impression.

It’s a good article, and I can’t really disagree with anything the author wrote.

But here’s the deal….

Does it really matter if your blog gets lots of comments?

The second article ever posted to this very blog you are reading right now was, What is Your Goal? In that post we discussed how your blog needs to have a SMART goal. Is “number of blog comments” a reasonable goal for a real estate blog?

Not in my opinion.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE getting blog comments. The interaction and learning they can provide are invaluable, and are part of what separates a blog from a static, “traditional” web site.

But let’s think this through…

My main blog, The Phoenix Real Estate Guy (TPREG), gets a reasonable amount of comments. Not in the amount of some mega-blog along the lines of Mashable, Tech Crunch, etc. but it does OK for a real estate blog.

Let’s look at a little data for TPREG:

From January 1 through October 31, 2010

Unique visitors = 607,960

Page views = 1.4 million

Comments left = 3,086

Over three thousand comments left this year. That’s about 300 per month, or 10 per day. That doesn’t sound too bad.

But take a look at that visitor count and do some simple math…

607,960 / 3,086 = 197

So, one out of every 197 visitors leaves a comment. Or 1 comment for every 453 page views.

In other words, the vast majority of blog readers never leave a comment. Given that many people have commented dozens of times, the actual number of visitors per comment is likely much higher. But let’s just call it one comment for every 200 visitors for the sake of simplicity.

And the majority of those comments are from other real estate agents. Yes, sometimes real estate buyers and sellers comment. More often, they email or phone.

Comments rarely turn into clients.

This was my “number 11” that I added in the comments to the Active Rain post. And I’m sticking with it:

11. Don’t obsess over comment count. Realize the VAST majority of blog readers never leave a comment. Focus on calls to action that appeal to real estate buyers and sellers and get them to make contact in some way.

I’d trade 500 comments by other agents for 1 phone call, email, or home search registration by a potential home buyer or seller…

http://realestateblogpro.com/getting-comments-on-your-blog/feed/36http://realestateblogpro.com/getting-comments-on-your-blog/What is the right keyword density for my real estate blog posts?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RealEstateBlogPro/~3/FZj4lDz5t1I/
http://realestateblogpro.com/what-is-the-right-keyword-density-for-my-real-estate-blog-posts/#commentsSun, 10 Oct 2010 23:44:01 +0000http://realestateblogpro.com/what-is-the-right-keyword-density-for-my-real-estate-blog-posts/Continue reading →]]> Take a look around real estate blogs and you’ll see nuggets of wisdom posted that look similar to this:

The Phoenix real estate market is a mess! If you want to buy a home in Phoenix, then you should consult with a Phoenix realtor who knows and understands the Phoenix real estate market. Never buy a Phoenix home without utilizing a Phoenix realtor! Feel free to search for Phoenix homes on our Phoenix real estate blog, but be sure to call your Phoenix realtor before you go too far!

Yeah, they’ll even bold all those keywords because some “SEO guru” told them that helps Google understand that those words are important. If they’ve really been paying attention, they will even use <h2> or <h3> tags, like this:

The Phoenix Real Estate Market

The Phoenix real estate market is a mess! If you want to buy a home in Phoenix, then you should consult with a Phoenix realtor who knows and understands the Phoenix real estate market.

Use a Phoenix Realtor!

Never buy a Phoenix home without utilizing a Phoenix realtor! Feel free to search for Phoenix homes on our Phoenix real estate blog, but be sure to call your Phoenix realtor before you go too far!

Apparently the LOUDER YOU SCREAM AT GOOGLE the easier it is for Google to understand how to rank your article in search results.

Hogwash.

Let me make a few points here before I delve too deep into this. . .

1) Google employs really smart people. Smarter than everyone reading this put together. That’s not an insult to you and me, that’s a compliment to the hiring department at Google. They are so smart, you really don’t need to yell at them, or repeat the same words over and over and over in order for them to get it. They’re good at writing code that figures out what you are trying to say.

2) Real estate blog readers are smart too. And when they see crap written like the example above, two thoughts come into their heads:

Why the hell is this guy bolding every eighth word? I get a headache trying to read it.

This guy can’t write his way out of a wet paper sack. Why would I want this numbskull to be my Realtor?

Is that really what you want your blog reader – a potential client – to think?

Here’s my strategy on keywords and keyword density:

Write for your readers. Google will figure it out.

OK, so maybe that’s grossly oversimplifying search engine optimization. And I’m sure some SEO expert is rolling their eyes and chomping at the bit to call me an idiot. Go for it, knock yourself out.

Yes, of course keywords are important. It’s hard, for example, for a search engine to “get” that your article is about “Phoenix real estate” if you don’t use those key words at all in an article. But how often do you have to use them? I did a quick search on Google for “correct keyword density” and found these opinions:

Between 2% and 9%

Go with 2%

2.8% to 3.3% (Really? you’ve got it down to fractions of a percentage now? What if you’re at 3.4%?)

Max of 1.5%

I always go for 7%

4 to 8% but 10% is allowed. (Allowed? By whom?)

3% to 7% is the perfect keyword density

For articles, I stay under 2%. For blog posts a maximum of 4% (Uhm, what’s the difference?)

In other words, no one really knows what is optimal.

Maybe. It. Doesn’t. Matter.

Write for your readers. If you are writing about Phoenix real estate, then those key words will most likely occur naturally in your writing, and that really does seem good enough for the smarties at Google to figure things out.

Worry about the quality of your article, your spelling, grammar and writing well (or at least decently with fairly good sentence structure). Forget about calculating keyword density and forcing your article to contain some random percentage of words. Forced writing is just that – forced. It won’t read well, it won’t be followed well and you are WAY better off engaging with your readership than some random search engine bot.

Keyword density is WAY over-rated. Write naturally. Write like a human. After all, real estate blog readers ARE human. Well, at least most of them…

But hey, I am not an SEO expert. I’m just a real estate broker that blogs for business. Here is a terrific article where several well regarded SEO experts opine on keyword density. What they say may surprise you, or that so-called “SEO Guru/Blogging expert” that seems to lie around every corner.

Hidden nugget of info: I would like this blog, and hence most of its articles, to rank well in search engines for “Real Estate Blog” (and related terms like “real estate blog consulting”). Note “real estate blog” is in the title of this post (and the post URL), in the first paragraph of this post, roughly in the middle, and in the second to last paragraph as well. Additionally, the words “real estate” and “blog” (not together) are scattered about the article naturally. That happens. That’s good. Someday, when much more content is added to this new blog and it has received some back links, that ranking might be achieved. If you think you are going to dominate the search engines from one post, think again. This is a marathon folks, not a sprint…

]]>http://realestateblogpro.com/what-is-the-right-keyword-density-for-my-real-estate-blog-posts/feed/86http://realestateblogpro.com/what-is-the-right-keyword-density-for-my-real-estate-blog-posts/The Two Best Tools for Blogginghttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RealEstateBlogPro/~3/CP_FEVErDtE/
http://realestateblogpro.com/the-two-best-tools-for-blogging/#commentsThu, 16 Sep 2010 20:04:59 +0000http://realestateblogpro.com/the-two-best-tools-for-blogging/Continue reading →]]> Yeah, I know. At the end of my last post, What to write about on your real estate blog, I promised an article on blogging time management.

That article is 90% complete. But as I was writing it, I got to thinking (uh oh).

There are tons of tools out there that help make blogging more efficient. Do a Google search and you’ll find them.

But that’s not the point in this article. The point here is to present you with the two best tools you can use for your real estate blogging adventure.

Seriously folks, if you want to have a successful (and I don’t care how you chose to define “successful”) real estate blog you have to use your brain, and you have to write.

(Or use a camera – video or still. Although I think, for now, it’s much harder to get ranked in search engines if all you do is video or still photography).

There are few absolute truths in this world, but here are two for you:

Real estate blogging is hard work.

There is no shortcut, no magic pill.

If you want success in this space, you are going to need to work your ass off, be consistent, not be afraid to experiment – and fail, have thick skin, write – a lot, and think.

If you want to pay someone hundreds to thousands of dollars for a custom Facebook page, or a visually appealing blog or web site, or some automated system to Tweet, accumulate “friends” or “followers”, then knock yourself out. But while you are writing checks, keep in mind that none of that stuff is going to do damn thing if you don’t write, engage, and work.

This real estate blogging thing is a marathon folks, not a sprint. If you think you can start a blog today and have the phone ring tomorrow, don’t bother wasting your time.

To be successful in real estate, you don’t have to blog. You don’t have to be on Twitter, LikedIn, Facebook or any other site.

But you do have to generate prospects, you have to know what you’re doing, you have to understand your market – and your clients. And you know what? You have to work your ass off.

You can’t just throw money at this, or any other method of prospecting, and expect it to work. The Internet isn’t magic. You don’t just hang a web site out there and expect the phone to ring or the inbox to light up. What you do is read, study, grow, try, evaluate, adjust and try again. Rinse and repeat.

Need some help from tools, systems, processes and training along the way? Fine. Nothing wrong with that.

But nothing is going to substitute for your brain, and your keyboard.

PS: I’ll still post the time management article. I just had to get this out of my head.

Everyone wants to play with an iPad. I’d make a page.ly logo my desktop background. Then when people wanted to play with my iPad, they’d say, “What’s page.ly?” I could tell them all about the goodness that is page.ly. I’d be like a page.ly Ambassador/Fanboy.

I’m turning 50 in October. FIFTY. I need all the cool factor I can muster. Having an iPad would make me like 25 on the awesomeness scale. I’d be young and hip. Again.

I’m a PC guy. And I get crap all the time from the folks at Gangplank (where Page.ly World Headquarters is located) for using a PC and not a Mac. If I had an iPad, all those people could STFU.

Right about now, someone is probably saying, “What the heck is page.ly?” In a nutshell, they provide spectacular, and ridiculously simple hosting for WordPress sites. The very blog you are reading right now is hosted by page.ly. You can, and I’m not exaggerating here, have a self-hosted “WordPress.org” blog up and running in minutes. They install it, set it up, update it, load plugins and all that jazz. Click a few buttons and you can have a blog running on the kick-ass WordPress platform in no time flat. It’s easy-peasy. Trust me, go to page.ly right now.